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Another example is their mastery of acoustics. I remember visiting ruins of Roman amphitheaters when I younger, and getting surprised at how they had managed to
by athrun 5y ago
Another example is their mastery of acoustics.
I remember visiting ruins of Roman amphitheaters when I younger, and getting surprised at how they had managed to design them so that the audience would clearly hear what was happening on stage, even from great distance.
I was told it was not entirely clear to us what key principles they were following to get the acoustics working so well and that a lot of their wisdom had been lost to us.
It was like 25 years ago, so I hope we've made progress in rediscovering some of these techniques. But still...
- RNCTX 5y agoWe've lost wisdom from ~200 years ago, never mind 2,000 years ago. If you look around architectural preservation forums and publications you'll find lots of examples of people trying to preserve historic buildings and doing more harm than good by using modern materials. We forget why things rot, we forget why certain paint formulations are better than others, we forget why certain mortars are for certain bricks (that's a big one, lots of old buildings are rendered worthless by a tuck pointing job with modern concrete that breaks all of the bricks in the first couple of years), the list goes on and on.
- bserge 5y agoWe didn't. We just don't design for longevity any more. Too many historical/protected buildings sit in disrepair and without being used because no one wants to pay for a "proper" restoration. Why would they? Prices are insane and we live in a capitalist free market society. Even the government doesn't care.
- RNCTX 5y agoI agree and your observation is also true. The short memory is a symptom of the system. The downvotes you're getting are illustrative the glass houses of the management of the tech biz, lol.
- DeathArrow 5y agoAlso some of the architectural techniques used by romans were lost. Also they had running water and toilets which in the 19th century was something unheard of.
- lostlogin 5y agoA lose a few points for the lead pipework though.
- moffkalast 5y agoTo be fair, they were using extremely hard water so the lead quickly accumulated a layer of calcium carbonate which made them mostly safe to use.
- bserge 5y agoOh, no, we actually know these techniques really well. Even a quick Google search for "theatre acoustics design" shows a lot of cool stuff. Often, modern buildings are just lazily designed. Kind of like houses that forego hundreds/thousands of years of ventilation knowledge because you can just slap A/C everywhere.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]